Alabama activists say defunding police rooted in legacy of southern organizing article video image

Alabama Activists Say Defunding Police Rooted In Legacy Of Southern Organizing

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BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Black freedom fighters in Alabama once changed this country.

Speaking onstage in Kelly Ingram Park on Juneteenth, Celestine Hood, a woman who witnessed radical change during the Civil Rights Movement, said Alabamians had the power to do it again.

Hood was a child in this park in May 1963, one of the young students participating in a demonstration for racial equality when Police Chief Eugene “Bull” Connor ordered attack dogs and firehoses on protesters. Images of children enduring that brutality enraged the world, sparking international support for the movement.

In May of this year, a video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in custody for allegedly spending counterfeit money, shocked the world again. Protests erupted in big cities and rural towns, demanding an end to police and vigilante killings of Black people.

“We had dogs and firehoses,” Hood said. “You’ve got tear gas. You’ve got rubber bullets. It’s the same fight.”

The crowd of a few hundred — Black, brown and white, young and old —nodded, raised their fists.

police: smiling man with red shirt, khaki pants leans on SUV labelled Jacksonville Police

Alabama Police Chief Discusses Whether Policing Can Be Safer For Officers, Communities

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JACKSONVILLE, Alabama — When Marcus Wood was a kid, he said, the neighborhood police hosted barbecues for his community, handing out sticker badges, teaching him and his friends to fish. “I grew up in what you would call the projects,” Wood said. “Those cops influenced my life in a very positive way.”

Today Wood, 34, is the first Black police chief in Jacksonville, a small university town. A native of Weaver, Alabama, he previously worked as an Army police officer, a National Guardsman, a corrections officer, a fugitive investigator and a trainer for the state’s police academy at his alma mater, Jacksonville State University. 

This year, as Black Lives Matter protests assembled in cities around the world in the wake of Minnesota police killing George Floyd, an unarmed Black man suspected of using a counterfeit $20 bill, protesters gathered for days in Jacksonville to discuss police brutality and racism in the justice system. At the time, in June, Wood told a local TV news station: “We appreciate [protesters] being a force for us, because we don’t want bad cops in law enforcement.” The comment came with the announcement of a citywide curfew.